


Missed Connections

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canceled Flights, M/M, Only One Room, Past Castiel/Meg Masters, Past Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, With Only One Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 04:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15065486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: Flying home from an overseas research trip, Sam finds himself stranded at the airport.  Castiel flew into the same airport, returning from his father's funeral.  Between the storm cancelling flights and the Super Bowl, hotel rooms are very hard to find, and Castiel and Sam find themselves sharing.





	Missed Connections

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by an anonymous prompter on Tumblr: Airport/Travel AU + Bed Sharing

All Sam wanted was to get home to his brother and faceplant into bed. Unfortunately, the thunderstorm that had blown up out of nowhere made that impossible, so he was stuck in this city overnight. The airline had promised to find him a hotel room and get him on a flight out the next day, but then they’d said there was a complication.

The complication turned out that, oh by the way, the Super Bowl was in that city. Hotel rooms were sold out, and they’d managed to find one – but they had two people they needed to find accommodations for. The room had a king-size bed, so in exchange for compensation, would Sam be willing to share with the other customer?

Couldn’t be worse than other bedmates Sam had had. Besides, if he accepted and the other guy didn’t, he’d still have a room. He agreed easily – although he had the sense to take the compensation offered, too. John Winchester would rise from the grave and beat his ass if he didn’t.

When he met up with his roommate, though, his jaw dropped. “Castiel?”

Castiel jumped. “Sam! Wow. What are the chances?”

“I don’t know.” This wasn’t going to be awkward at all. Castiel had been a good friend back in college, a friendship that had ended when Sam took off with Dean unexpectedly in the middle of the night after his girlfriend died. There had been some half-hearted attempts to stay in contact through email, but those had trailed off since Sam wouldn’t talk about his life on the road with Dean and hearing about Castiel finishing school and getting accepted to Stanford Medical School had been just too painful. “How have you been? Should I be calling you Dr. Engel?”

“No, you should be calling me Castiel. Or Cas. I did finish medical school, though.”

“I never doubted that you would. What else have you been up to?”

“I still run, although it’s difficult to commit to actual races or going too far. Taking a few days to go to my father’s funeral had everyone all bothered about what to do if an emergency came up. When I’m late getting back, there may well be panic.”

“That important, huh?”

“Neurosurgery. Prompt treatment can, literally, mean the difference between life and death or brain-death. It’s very stressful, and I’m terrible about making myself take proper breaks.”

“Ouch.” Sam hugged Castiel just like he did back at Stanford… and then realized that was fifteen years ago. “Sorry, man, I just…”

“It’s all right. We may have lost touch, but you’ve never been far from my mind. How have you been? Have you and Dean ever stopped running from your demons?”

“Sort of. We kind of inherited some property from a long-lost grandfather – you remember Dad never knew his real father?” Castiel nodded. “His real dad’s lawyers tracked us down and told us about this house out in the middle of nowhere, Kansas. Between that and the money, we don’t have to do anything, but we get bored and go on short trips pretty often. I keep thinking I’ll go back to school, but Dean won’t go with me, and I can’t leave him.”

“Kansas? I ended up in Nebraska, are you anywhere close to the border?”

“Lincoln’s about two hours away… more like one and a half if Dean’s driving. It’s the nearest major city.” Of course, knowing Sam’s luck, Cas was probably in Omaha…

Or not. Castiel’s face lit up. “Good. Dean always liked me, I bet you can get him to let you come hang out or even come with you. I would very much like to see you regularly again, even if it can’t be like the days at Stanford where it was every day. At least promise me that we can text?”

“Yeah, sure, let me give you mine and Dean’s phone numbers.” Sam held out his hand for Castiel’s phone and added both Winchesters as contacts. “Of everything about leaving Stanford… losing touch with you is easily my biggest regret. I’m so sorry. Jess’s death messed me up so bad…”

“I know. I wish I had been able to do something to help you, then, but I didn’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know that there was much you could have done, other than take off with me and Dean. And then I’d have had the guilt of taking you away from school to deal with instead of the loneliness of missing you and Jess.”

“I’d have done it, if it had occurred to me. More than once during medical school, I kept myself from going crazy by fantasizing about hunting you and Dean down and running off with you two. By then, though, I didn’t know how to track you down… there are still times I dream about it, though. A life where my time is my own, I’m not at the mercy of my phone and the chance of patients…”

“Well, now you know where to run if you ever do need to. You know Dean will be good about badgering you to take time off, so maybe that’ll help?”

Castiel smiled. “Yes. Between Dean nagging me to take care of myself and the potential of getting to spend time with you again, I suspect I will be better about keeping to some sort of sane level of work instead of constantly either at the office or asleep.”

“No one in your life to make you do that?”

“No. I stay in touch with some of my cousins online, but I don’t have friends in Lincoln or anywhere near, and no one special. What about you? Now that you’re settled down…”

“I still haven’t met anyone who can compete with the ghosts from college. Girls get compared to Jess, guys to…” And Sam cut himself off, mentally cursing himself. “I know it’s not fair, but I can’t help it.”

“Guys to…” Castiel said. “I don’t remember you having a boyfriend in college, or mentioning one from before. In fact, I seem to remember you telling me Jess was the only actual relationship you’d ever had.”

“Yeah, uh… look, I know that given the timing this is really awkward, but I was in love with you from the moment you helped me pass that physics class. But you were with Meg, so I didn’t say anything and then I found Jess so when you and Meg broke up…”

“I never told you the real reason Meg and I broke up, did I.”

“No. All you’d ever tell me was that she had turned out to be a demon and you needed to get away from her before you ended up condemned.”

“She was jealous of you. She couldn’t deal with the thought that if forced to choose between you and her, I refused to commit to choosing her. As a romantic partner, yes, I was not going to leave her for you, but when she started getting to the point where she was jealous of you being my best friend… if she didn’t trust me when I told her I wasn’t going to leave her for you no matter what my feelings were, I realized that I didn’t want to be in that relationship anymore. The demon was just anger at her for not trusting me.”

“Wow. Jess knew how I felt about you and said she didn’t have a problem sharing, and even encouraged me to talk to you about setting up some kind of poly thing once you’d had some time to get over Meg. I… I was considering it, when…”

“Do you still feel that way? I do.”

“This conversation started with me saying I never got a boyfriend because I kept comparing them to you!”

“Yes, but I don’t think I can measure up to your memory of me. Memories get edited, the real me you have to deal with my bad points.”

“You come a hell of a lot closer than anyone else ever could. So, uh, you want to… try dating each other this time?”

“Yes. Yes I do. I think the universe may be conspiring to tell us something, don’t you?”

“It certainly makes more sense than anything else.”


End file.
